Caroline and crew hold nerve at London Youth Games (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

Caroline and crew hold nerve at London Youth Games

3:22pm Friday 9th July 2010

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Hockey star Caroline Brosnan led Richmond to gold at the Balfour Beatty London Youth Games in a medal-laden weekend for the borough.

Hockey glory secured with a penalty flicks shootout semi-final defeat of Wandsworth, followed by a 1-0 win over favourites Bromley in the final.

Fourteen-year-old Brosnan, who lives in Kew and attends Sacred Heart High School in Hammersmith, admits the success came against the odds.

“It was an excellent day and everything went to plan,” said Brosnan, who captained the side.

“It was scary in the semi-final because it went to penalty flicks, which was nerveracking.

“We weren’t expecting to win the final because we had played Bromley in the regional qualifiers and they had beaten us.”

Richmond also claimed silver in the indoor rowing and women’s swimming, finishing fourth out of 33 London boroughs after going head to head across 17 sports at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre at the largest youth sports event in Europe.

There was individual gold for Richmond’s Lady Eleanor Holles pupils Molly Savill and Yuan-Ying Man, both 14, who won the 50m freestyle and 50m breaststroke titles respectively.

It was an especially sweet triumph for Savill, who won in 28.41 seconds to retain her title from last year.

She said: “I am very pleased to defend my crown this year.

“It is always harder to come back and defend the title after you have won it the first time around.

“I thought I would feel under a lot more pressure, especially with the amount of people here, but I just went out there and did what I had to do.”

l Balfour Beatty is committed to helping raise the aspirations, motivation and attainment levels of young people in the communities in which it operates and has committed at least £1.7million to help develop the London Youth Games until 2013.

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